Toshiba Excite 13 Review and Ratings

Editors’ Rating:

Our Verdict:
The Excite 13 sports the largest screen of any tablet yet, and the best battery life of any Android tablet we've tested. Its high price and ultra-wide aspect ratio, however, will limit its appeal to dedicated movie hounds with deep pockets. Read More…

What We Liked…

Largest screen we've seen yet on a tablet

Superior battery life

Metal stand included in the box

What We Didn’t…

Size and weight make it better suited to couch than commute

Most apps don't take proper advantage of big screen

Resolution should be higher, considering size and price

Toshiba Excite 13 Review

Table of Contents

Introduction

How do you make your tablet stand out in a marketplace where everyone's selling similarly thin slabs of glass, metal, and plastic, with screen sizes ranging from 7 to 10 inches? Going smaller has already been done. So has going smaller than small. (See, for instance, Dell's Streak 5, or the tiny Archos 32 Internet Tablet.) But in a world where large smartphones are selling well (despite derision from many reviewers), indicating consumer desire for larger interactive screens, taking tablet screen sizes above and beyond the currently ubiquitous 10 inches certainly sounds like a good idea—at least, in theory.

Enter Toshiba's Excite 13 tablet, equipped with the latest version of Android (4.0, a.k.a. "Ice Cream Sandwich"). With a massive 13.3-inch screen, it's certainly going to draw a lot of attention at in-store display stations when situated next to smaller tablets. ("Smaller tablets," at this point, means "everything else available.") But at 2.2 pounds and 13.5 inches across, it's not exactly easy to whip out and use when you're on the go. Plus, the screen's 16-to-9 aspect ratio, while great for wide-screen movie watching, isn't ideal for apps, magazine reading, or typing.

That being said, the Excite 13's battery life is the best we've recorded on an Android tablet. Combine that with the spacious screen, and that makes this tablet a perfect fit for itinerant movie geeks. If you travel a lot and like to watch movies, this tablet's something of a dream slate. Plus, storage-munching movie files will be well-served by the tablet's full-size SD-card slot, which supports cards up to 128GB.

The elegant logo and grid pattern on the Excite 13's back.

Know, though, that this tablet's specialized strengths come at a hefty price. With a starting price of $650 for the 32GB model (and $750 for a version with 64GB of onboard storage), it's much more expensive than 10-inch Android tablets with similar internals. The Asus Transformer Pad TF300, for instance, sports the same Nvidia Tegra 3 chip and 32GB of storage, and it's available online as low as $385.

We like that Toshiba is trying something different with the Excite 13. The company managed to keep the design slim, and the performance impressive, despite its size. But the tablet's high price, combined with the limitations of the larger screen size (more on that in a bit), means it's worth the price premium only for those heavily interested in watching movies on a slim slate with the biggest possible.